Okay, another plug for a funny piece of entertainment following my previous posting. My kid brother bought me the DVD of the first series of ‘Look Around You’, which is a glorious send-up of the 1970s programmes which were used to teach pupils and college students about science, maths and other subjects. The production styles: slightly fuzzy camera shots, corny old folk music, guys with Frank Zappa haircuts wearing tweedy jackets and black-rimmed spectacles, brought back scary memories of how long ago in style terms the 1970s now appears. I went to primary school in that era of flares, British Leyland cars, Roxy Music and endless labour disputes. The education programmes used to be narrated by some posh-sounding gent, or occasionally woman, normally with a perfect received pronunciation and heavy touch of condescension. The programme-makers would sometimes be a bit daring and let the vowels of Edinburgh or even Wales onto the show.
It may be unlikely material for a spoof, but the show Look Around You is in my view the funniest television comedy I have seen in years. I do not know if someone who was not brought up in Britain when these original programmes were made would ‘get’ the gag. However, if you are British, aged about 40 and your blood runs cold at mention of the words NHS spectacles or “modular study guides”, then rent out or buy this DVD. We like to bash the BBC here at Samizdata because of the tax-financing of it, sorry, the licence fee, but this is a gem and is in the same bracket in my opinion as ‘The Fast Show’.
(Health warning: I laughed so much at this show that my jaw is now actually quite painful. Avoid liquids).
Even those of us who were primary schooled in the late 80s and early to mid 90s will appreciate the satire behind it.
I remember being about five or six years old on a weekend morning watching some of the OU stuff just before the kids’ stuff came on.
In high school we were often treated to the best in schools television- often something on tape which had sat in the school’s science labs for the past fifteen years.
If you’re hungry for nostalgia, Jonathan, have a gander here:
http://www.transdiffusion.org/index.html
I was first introduced to “Look Around You” a couple of years ago, back at a friend’s house after a night out. (It’s perfect stoner fare, and though I don’t do that sort of thing any more, I still love the programme.)
James, you and I have similar memories about schools TV!
Well I am a decade older than Johnathan.
What satire?
I remember “Potters Wheels”
And Rag tag and Bobtail. Still trying to work the plot line out on that one.
Life was like that back then.
You kids dont know you’re born!
Cue MP sketch.
I have a feeling you’d love Schoolhouse Rock.
“I’m just a bill/On Capitol Hill” and “Electricity, Electricity” are my faves.
Even the 12 year-old towcestarianette thinks Look Around You is a scream. Probably because the cast remind her so much of daddy.
The best (unintentional) “spoof” on “science for kids” that I upon recently was the govenment minister (name, I can not remember the name) who said ” If I was a teacher I would show them [the “kids”] an episode of Dr Who and ask them to explain the science of the Doctor and Billie Piper”.
A correct reply from a school pupil would run something like the following:
“Piper is the name of the actress not the character Sir, and the lady is not on the show anymore in any case. As for the science of the show – there is no science in the show Sir, it is all a load of nonsense”.
It may be funny. I know I’ve enjoyed it when I’ve seen it.
It is morally wrong to give money to the BBC. If you’ve followed their support for any movement that will kill our troops, then you will be aware that in funding them, you are betraying our servicemen. If you’ve watched them build up the BNP into a party with a real chance of winning votes by cack-handed attempts to suppress them, then you know that in funding them, you’re handing power to Nick Griffin. If you’re aware of their continually dishonest campaign to stop you buying goods or services from the third world, you know that for the sake of a laugh you’re grinding the faces of the poor into the dirt.
Even if you’re not a libertarian, even if the constant support for regulation of everything does not sicken you, even if the suppression of debate through public monopoly of speech does not get you down, even if you feel the same way about guns as the Brady Campaign, even if it doesn’t hurt you, the BBC snatches the bread from the mouths of the nation’s poor and spends it on keeping their lives ugly, and the lives of those yet poorer, yet worse. I gather some people find torturing cats to be entertaining. I don’t approve of their indulging this, but it’s less selfish and corrupting than feeding the beast.
I’m not, incidentally, suggesting that people avoid watching it. There’s plenty of ways of violating the BBC’s intellectual property that offer them no succour whatsoever. That, I would have thought, would be a totally proper use of the Samizdata bully pulpit.
James
Sit down and smoke this
You’ve been taking life seriously again
Havent you son?
The Late great Bill Hicks
James, no need to lecture us about the iniquities of the BBC as you are pushing at a very open door in this particular building. My point is that even a state-financed outfit can produce good stuff occasionally, stopped clocks being accurate twice a day and all that.
I was bought-in until you made the comment about The Fast Show, which is six or seven admittedly good jokes and parodies repeated over and over and over again.
Sounds promising though. In a recent trip to France, it suddenly occurred to me that what is so annoying about the news is that the producers have clearly never watched The Day Today and therefore have no self-consciousness at all about the more excessive clichés of TV journalism.
manuel, how can you say this? The Fast Show is genius.
“Of course I was vey, vey-vey drunk at the time”
Jonathan, you’re not just saying that “even a state-financed outfit can produce good stuff occasionally, stopped clocks being accurate twice a day and all that.”
You’re advocating fiscal support for them. That’s a serious thing. As you suggest, you know that by supporting them, you’re harming your country and your world. Knowingly doing the wrong thing is not better than ignorantly doing harm.
Even assuming the laugh is worth the pain passed to others, why on earth would you recommend getting hold of the material in a manner that respects the beeb’s IP when there are so many alternatives?
Hell, the stuff’s available on Youtube. Recommending that people buy the video isn’t even the way of sharing it most broadly.
To offer an analogy: The Socialist Worker’s Party have some good ideas (getting us out of the EU, for instance). It’s totally a positive thing to point out that they have good ideas. Persuading people to donate to them, however, is not a good act, assuming you are convinced of their general depravity.
The Fast Show is great. The Jazz Night one in particular is one I feel genuine gratitude for. It’s just that you could fit it into one or two episodes and not really miss anything at all. It’s as if every Monty Python episode included a bloke going into a shop to complain about a dead pet (this week – a hamster!!!).
James, I don’t want this thread to become some sort of chest-beating exercise in damning the BBC – something I am well able to do on another occasion, believe me.
I uppose you could see this show on YouTube or somesuch although given that the BBC may have copyright issues about that.
Sometimes I want to have fun, like regular people, and encourage people in same.
Can anyone else still effortlessly call to mind the trumpet fanfare that announced an upcoming Open University show on BBC2? I used to love watching OU programmes, especially the science and maths one. I got my first exposure to the concept of a continuous group in a show about the rotation group aged 12 or so. How many 12-year-olds learn about group theory these days?
If the BBC wouldn’t have copyright issues with it, I wouldn’t have recommended it. It is precisely because it avoids paying them that I’d put it forward as a more moral investment. It’s also easier, of course, and the bite-sized nature of Look Around You is probably better suited to YouTube breaks at work than almost any other current TV production.
I’m not trying to persuade you that the beeb is bad. Sure, we agree on that, as well as agreeing that sometimes it makes entertaining programs. I’m trying to persuade you that it is not good to knowingly support evil. Even if the evil that you are supporting can be quite entertaining. You should be free to do so, but you should not be free from criticism when you do.
James, so by making use of a service that I have had to pay for anyway – I wish differently, of course – I am supporting “evil”. As I pay the licencee fee, I fail to see how I am significantly adding to the forces of darkness by buying a DVD for a few pounds. I am bored by this exchange, so don’t try to continue it, please.